The ins and outs of living in Puerto Rico

Internet Service Providers in Puerto Rico

There are several Internet service providers in Puerto Rico. Depending on where you live is the company that you will have to use for cable Internet, DSL however is offered by the same company throughout the island. If you’re considering cable Internet then you will be choosing between Liberty Cablevision and Choice Cable. If you are looking for DSL then the company that offers it is Claro, which is also the phone company formerly known as Puerto Rico Telephone Company (PRTC).

There are also some smaller companies that offer mainly wireless Internet, but I am not very familiar with them so I will not mention them here, however, there are a few things that they all have in common so I will mention them here and then I’ll go a little bit more in depth regarding each individual company.

Just so you know right off the bat, Internet in Puerto Rico is slower and much more expensive than what you probably have/had in the states, no real reason, it’s just the way it is, especially around the San Juan metropolitan area.

I know it is much slower than what we had in the states six years ago. We had cable Internet at a speed of 12 Mbps and we paid roughly $40, now for the same price here in Puerto Rico, we get a little bit less than 3 Mbps! And it wasn’t until late 2013 that 3 Mbps was the fastest speed for my house; now the fastest speed for my house is 30 Mbps for DSL, and up to 60 Mbps for cable.

I have had both cable Internet and DSL, and my experience was that cable Internet, at least in my house, was slightly faster but very inconsistent, which means that at times when many people are on the Internet, my Internet got really slow, and I’m talking REALLY slow! While DSL, which is what I have now, has a slower max speed than cable, but it is consistent, which I like because I want the same speed whether it is 2 AM on a Sunday morning or a 6 PM on a Wednesday evening.

I’m not exactly sure why the Internet in Puerto Rico is that much slower and so expensive, but the truth is that you probably can get faster Internet speeds in your phone than you can in your house (like in my case), although they are improving a little bit by slowly expanding their fiber optic network, but you will pay more for that.

Another thing to mention is that if by chance we are affected by a tropical storm or hurricane, we will lose power for a few days, and cable for even more days, which means that your cable Internet will also be out of service until the cable company restores it, even if your electricity is already restored. However, those who have DSL will likely see Internet service restored as soon as the electricity gets restored, so a lot of people have one of those big computer battery backups, but also connect their DSL router in it.

Claro (DSL):

Claro is the main DSL Internet service provider Puerto Rico. They claim to have up to 50 Mbps speeds and they also pride themselves to have unlimited download data. They cover pretty much the entire island, as they use the phone lines for the Internet in just about every house has a phone “land-line”. This company may actually be the only choice for Internet for those who live in the interior and other mountainous areas since the cable companies mostly serve the coastal municipalities and the more densely populated areas.

Good points: Their Internet speed is consistent which means that he will not get noticeably slower during peak usage times (normally in the evenings). They also have access to ESPN3 which is something that I really like and I’m sure a lot of people out there too. Since you get unlimited download data you can stream video watch Netflix movies, or watch ESPN3 without having to worry if you will surpass the download data limit.

Bad points: Customer service is about as bad as it can get. If you call customer service you have to go through I don’t know how many options to be able to talk to an actual person. They simply do not give you the option of talking to someone unless it is for sales, so maybe you can pretend that you were going to buy something talk to someone, and then have them redirect you customer service because otherwise you simply will not find a way to talk to a person. Not only that, their technicians don’t work on the weekends, so if your Internet is out on a Saturday, don’t expect your Internet back that day. Also, good luck finding someone who speaks English.

Liberty Cablevision is now the main cable Internet service provider across the San Juan metropolitan area and also eastern and north central Puerto Rico. Currently they are offering internet packages with speeds up to 60 Mbps. If you had OneLink, you are now with Liberty and the data cap of 40 Gigs that OneLink had is no longer in effect. Liberty Cablevision, as of now, has unlimited data download. You have to be careful though, some of their more affordable “triple pack” plans only have Spanish TV channels.

Good points: Although I have never used Liberty’s Internet service (I did have OneLink though), they seem to have, at least on paper, some of the best plans simply because they have the fastest speeds, unlimited data downloads, and access to ESPN3. People that I know that use Liberty Cablevision seem to be generally happy with the service and the reliability.

Bad points: Like I mentioned above, I have personally not used their Internet service. However, given the fact that it is cable Internet, it is susceptible to decreased speeds
during peak usage times, which means that you will likely get the advertised speeds only at times that almost no one is using the Internet. Adding to that, friends of mine who do have Liberty have told me that the internet does get really slow during peak times. Also, a friend of mine did tell me that he tried to access ESPN3 but he couldn’t, for some reason Liberty Cablevision was not in the list of allowed internet service providers to use ESPN3.

Choice cable offers Internet to Southern, Western, and Northwestern Puerto Rico. They claim to have three Internet speeds 12 Mbps, 20 Mbps, and 50 Mbps.
Their prices seem to be fairly reasonable compared to those of the other cable companies. I saw an ad for $30 a month for the 12 Mbps package, which is not bad compared to other companies that charge $45 for 4 Mbps. However, I have heard only bad reports from its customer support, which although not good, it’s not surprising,unfortunately.

Good points: I used Choice Internet for a few days when I went on a trip to Northwestern Puerto Rico, I was happy to see that it was faster than my Internet at home, which proves that the San Juan metro area does not always get the latest technology first. I was told by a friend though that he was extremely happy to not have to deal with Choice anymore because of what he described as “lazy” customer service.

Bad points: When I used Choice Internet, I was happy to see that it was fast, but I was also not very happy to see how much it slowed down. I expected it to slow down
during peak usage hours since, after all, it is cable, but from 12 Mbps to around 1 Mbps was a bit of a shock. In addition, as soon as I saw how fast it could go, I tried ESPN3 but I was disappointed to see that there is no access to ESPN3, at least not when I used it back in February 2012. One more thing, I couldn’t a “Choice Cable” English website. =( So there you have it! If you have any questions or comments regarding the Internet service providers in Puerto Rico, please let me know! I hope this general guide helps!

125 Comments

All Internet services experience outages in Puerto Rico. I have Claro Internet and Phone services. Claro has outages that can last up to 2 months. Claro advertises very good deals for Internet services for the home and cell phones. Expect to receive bills while without service for months.

Yes, that happens with all companies. I had outages with Liberty that were weeks long and they still charged me. I claimed that I needed a refund and they never refunded me, they just canceled my contract.

what ISP is better for playing games online? Choice or Claro . the lowest ping i can get with claro using their provided modem is around 26ms.. inside the island (not that great) . if there is any other company i should be on the lookout let me know.

Unfortunately my gaming days are long gone so I don’t really know which ISP is better for gaming. What I do know is that generally speaking Claro is much more stable than Choice. The internet speeds with Claro are normally lower than Cable but they will not fluctuate, meanwhile the Choice Cable internet speeds will vary wildly depending on usage in your local area.

For those of you that live in rural areas….
I’ve had Claro internet service for the last two years and here’s a break down of my expierence:

Frequent outages!!!! I lose service at least once a month. I have been without service for more than a week on six separate occasions. (Currently I’ve been without service for almost 2 weeks. )

On two occasions my neighbors had new lines installed, and the technicians knocked out the line to my house. (It took them a week to restore service)
To put to it bluntly, Claro’s technicians are incompetent!
When making appointments to have repairs done, more than half the time the technician don’t even show up. They even file a report stating that work was done! The problem is that most technicians are subcontracted and have zero accountability. Their main priority is to bilk Claro for as much as they can and do as little work as possible!

In my opinion Claro’s infrastructure is crumbling, and they have neither the desire nor recourses to fix it!

It is one of the worst service providers on the island. (The cellular network has terrible signal strength as well)

About Claro…We moved to a another home, trying to transfer service since June 2016. We have been without service since June 2016 and it is now November 21st, 2016. The technicians keep cancelling the appointments and moving the installation date further into the next month, December, 2016.This is the first that I have seen that it takes 7 months to transfer service from an old address to a new one in history. No other coverage of other companies are available where we moved. AT&T wireless does not work well in our location, but according to Claro, we are told that our area is covered by them. We may get our Internet connected in the year 2017. 🙁

It would be nice to see some more competition, I don’t understand some of the things i see with different islands and their ISP’s the prices in some places like the Philippines for example can be upwards of 400 USD a month for a 30mb connection, I feel somewhat privileged, in the U.S. and often have a hard time understanding where my friends in PR are coming from but isn’t this mostly due to people taking advantage of your situation of being in such a remote location? in my opinion. If we had more competition it would drive costs down, but even in the U.S. it’s a pretty big monopoly and customer service is kind of a pain no matter what ISP you are using, I just think if PR had a few good ISP some businesses could have multiple back up generators, for a call center, and hire on a good chunk of people in a higher paying market than what’s generally available to you there. There are many companies that should or would jump at this opportunity but the fact that the internet is so slow and unreliable likely deters them. another cool option if a relatively cheap/fast isp shows up on the island is Companies can have their employees either sign in remotely thru a vpn and work from home, but with a high cost for unreliable internet companies aren’t willing to make that jump.

There is plenty of competition, there are many smaller companies that could give you internet. The problem is that everyone wants to make a lot of money and they provide the least amount of service with the lowest number of employees possible for the highest possible price. The cable and DSL companies have their good and bad things so even though they compete head to head, they have different strengths and weaknesses and they know that, so it is a matter of which company sucks less for you because in my case DSL works great but cable it terrible because of my location, so regardless of how slow the DSL internet is, the Cable internet will be worse even if I had 60Mbps of speed. So Cable internet has better service in call centers but their internet is unreliable and speeds fluctuate quite a bit, DSL has slower internet speeds and has horrid customer service but you rarely need to deal with them. So which one is worse?

The smaller companies are generally better but they also cost a lot more for far slower speeds than even DSL.

I used to feel privileged with internet speeds in the US, and I still kind of do, until I met a man from Switzerland and told me he paid 50$ per month for 1500 Mbps internet speeds at his house and that the internet in the US is a joke compared to Europe and Asia.

On a good note, gigabit internet is making its way to PR slowly, so people can get super fast and reliable internet in some areas and they are expanding. Check out the page on Gigabit Internet in Puerto Rico.

Doesn’t anyone know what internet service may reach mountainous areas like villisla Miraflores? I’ve already tried claro and liberty and they don’t reach and claro said they were going o out and optical fiber cable but still haven’t done it.

Liberty offers good service. Answer calls 24/7. I have 10Mb and always receive 10Mb when I check the speed. I have had the service in two different parts of San Juan for several months now. Up until they changed the attenuator (small piece between the cable and the modem) about 5 days ago, I was losing service for about 5 min about once a week over the last month. The service has generally been very good. My biggest complaint is that I stream news throughout the day and it does get choppy for several minutes about every 2 days. I believe that the speed between your modem and the Liberty server is good. It seems to me that the problem is the internet infrastructure to and from the island. I will be trying out Claro 4Mb DSL tomorrow and will let you know the results. I have had dealt with both very good & lazy customer service reps & technicians. Depends on who answers the phone or comes to the house.

Thank you for the comment. Like I mentioned in a previous comment, I don’t know all of the limitations each company has so I am not quick to judge, I just share my experiences. Personally, my house is on the end of the Cable line so my cable internet used to get ridiculously slow during peak times and sometimes completely out, but like you, I have heard a few people not have many complaints with Liberty, they are very few compared to the people who complains about them though.

I have 20Mb download and 3Mbps Upload with Claro for $55. It’s way better and stable than Liberty. I hate Liberty so much. Speeds are unstable and all they do is tell you to go change your modem. No tech support whatsoever.

If you can get a wi-fi internet connection at hot-spots like Starbucks or hotels, why can’t you get wireless for your home? [I love the way Liberty calls their connection ‘wireless when I am always tripping over the 3 wires connected to the black box, and what do you call that black box anyway? Is it an adapter, a router, a cable box?]
Liberty service is terrible as is Claro. But it’s about par for PR where the concept of service or is non-existent [almost] everywhere. People are not motivated to do the best they can. They do the least they can get away with.
By the way, always call liberty when your service is unstable or out for 4+ hours/day, and insist that they give you a credit for those days. Puerto Ricans don’t complain when the service is bad, and that’s 1 reason that companies, and stores, and banks, etc can give bad service. My entire building had no internet/cable for several days, but apparently I was the only one to report it. The rest seemed content to keep paying for nothing.

Now, I am not very quick to judge or to complain without knowing the reasons behind the particular situation. As much as both Liberty and Claro have their shortcomings, but I don’t really know their limitations or challenges. What I do know is that my experience is that Claro’s customer service is terrible but the internet is stable but slower (at least in my case), Liberty’s customer service is better but the internet service itself is often slowed down or out, especially in peak times. So, the lesser of two evils is the one that you would choose.

It may be true that you were the only one that complained, or it may not be and they just told you that. People do complain here, but if they tell you that they have already got the complaint but they haven’t worked on it yet then it makes them look worse, so they are more likely to say that you are the first one to complain so they don’t look so bad about not fixing the internet yet.

I haven’t heard any reviews of either one of those. Aeronet has received mixed reviews from my friends and colleagues. I do know that any of those smaller companies are rather pricey, but maybe their service will be worth the money.

Hi, I’m a resident from the north side of Puerto Rico, Manati. I’ve been with Claro since 2001, never had many problems with their service. However, I’m tired of their internet plans and low megabytes speeds. I’ve been seeking information on Liberty services and their fiber optics. They do offer good speed for a fair price, comparing it with Claro and it does give a an ease on my pockets. But I have friends that have told me their problems with the company. Mostly are about how unreliable and slow their internet is. This frightens me, cause I depend heavily on my internet for entertaining purposes and work related. I’ve been told that the internet is shared between consumers in regions, is this true? One of the representative told me that their fiber optics are either underground or in the phone lines. I wouldn’t be sure which applied my neighborhood, is there any way to find out? Also, a friend of mine was a Choice costumer (since they been bought by Liberty) have they already changed their structure to Liberty? I mean, is there wiring changed or not. Cause he’s hasn’t had any problems with his modem and thought it might be cause he still has those dependent lines of Choice.

Yes, cable internet is shared with those around you, that is the big selling point for Claro since their internet is dedicated to only you, so there are no real change in internet speed regardless of the neighborhood usage. I’ve been with Claro for a few years now and I do understand that their prices are high and speeds low, so I have also been tempted to switch to Liberty. However my father made the switch to Liberty and he is not impressed, also a friend of mine keeps telling me how unreliable they are.

Choice is now a Liberty company. I doubt they have changed any significant amounts of wiring since Choice was also cable internet.

Claro’s customer service it rather bad but to be fair I have rarely needed to deal with the customer service. For now I will stay with Claro, if I switch to cable internet I would like to have a trial period or no contract so I can cancel whenever.

There is no contract with Liberty, but the prices are even higher now for what they have, and what you get is really rubbish. You could get the top of the download speed on any given day, but you could also get a day of no internet. Their technician really have no experience, no idea of what to do when they visit you to troubleshoot or fix your internet issue. The most they do is change the modem, that’s it. They think that they are the bomb, you know? An example, today the speed was about 0.86Mbps, and an upload of .054Mbps. A reboot to the modem, didn’t work, they didn’t try anything else, so they opted to send a tech to my house for the next day. Right now my internet speed is not steady, at one time I could get 10.0Mbps, while 5 minutes later it might drop to 1.0Mbps. If you tell the tech that info, they could use it to wipe their butt because they don’t really care. That info means that there is some kind of trouble in the field, in one (or maybe even more) of the equipment. There is one thing going for them that Claro really stinks at it, and that is the call center. At least a human being does answer your call, while in Claro you are sent to an automatic answering machine, no live help. After the struggle to get a tech to visit you, they usually miss it, and you have to wait AGAIN and make another appointment. Of course you don’t share the internet, but if you have a problem with the internet, they claim they have the right to make you wait up to 15 days, and that is including an outage.
There are other options out there, is just that people don’t think outside the box, all they see is Claro and the monopoly king Liberty.
Just to mention a few:
4netpr.com
aeronet
osnet
hughesnet

I agree that some people should just look outside the big players. I canceled with cable due to the same issued you’re describing, however with Claro, my issues have been resolved over the phone and they have been very few issues. However, one time I did have to wait about 5 days but that was about 4 years ago. But there are other companies, not that they are necessarily better either, although I don’t know many people with some of the other companies, I have heard mixed reviews as well…

This is true. I was a Choice client and since Liberty bought it, the service went downhill. I switched to Claro due to them having fiber optics internet service on my area (Fiber to the Cabinet) and I have 20Mbps download and 3Mbps Upload with them now. So far it’s super fast and constant. I had Liberty and it was horrible. On the evenings, speeds where horrible and it was always unstable. Now with Claro, I have a consistent speed and it never fails. Liberty is cable internet, it’s shared with the neighborhood and if your neighbor is doing some heavy usage, your speeds will be affected. With Claro the speeds will remain fast because DSL is a unique connection between your house to their Office. You don’t share it with anyone. Also, Liberty (aka Choice) gave me 20Mbps of Download and .768Kbps of upload… Their upload speeds are horrible. The only thing is that Liberty is a little bit cheaper than Claro (for the plan I have) because with Liberty I was paying $45 montly and now with Claro I pay $45 for 10 months and then I’ll be paying $55 plus taxes. The difference is that Claro is fast 24/7 unlike Liberty which is shared with the neighborhood. I suggest you to check if you can get higher speeds with Claro. They are having some good offers. As I said, I have 20/3 for $55 and it’s a personal line. Not shared and very consistant. No dropouts.

That’s why I went with Claro. It works 100 times better than Liberty. I’ve never had issues with Claro since I switched. The only thing is that you need to verify how much speed you can receive where you live and how good or bad are your phone lines. I live near a Cabinet so I can receive upto 80Mbps.

I’ve had Liberty for about 6 months and it has been pretty decent until the last month or two… I keep getting drop outs and freezes… I call and set up technician appointments and as soon as I schedule the appointment the service starts working great… for about a week so I cancel the technician appointment as soon as I cancel the appointment the next day it goes back to dropping in and out… I call they run test… tell me I need to exchange my modem so I do… now I have no service. I used to do installs for Cox Communications in the states years ago…this kind of stuff to me seems a little shady…

Yes, I remember having those problems. When I had Cable they switched my modem 5 times! It never solved the problem. They never seemed to care for the root cause of the problem. I ended up canceling with them.

Just signed up with Liberty. Went well. They were even open on Easter for customer service & tech support. Did everything over phone. However, did have to pay $25 installation fee, which is uncommon in US. An indep speed test confirmed advertised speeds, but I did conduct test on Easter around noon, which is a low time of internet consumption.

That’s nice! I’ve heard mixed reviews about Liberty, even when I spoke with my father yesterday he told me it was good at times and not good at others. Let us know how it goes on high traffic times like weeknights!

Whatever you do don’t pick claro. Took me 8 months to get my money back from them was after numerous phone calls I finally had to call the better business. I paid full price so I wouldn’t have a contract was promised service and guess what no can do. And when I tried to get reimbursed they told me they have 90 days to give refunds. Guess what I took almost a year. And forget it customer service isn’t there priority once they get your money and good luck because no one speaks English.

I’ve been on Choice in Aguada since last August. Went through a bad spell where it went down every day for a couple months. They finally found and fixed some wiring fault in our neighborhood. After that it’s been quite stable.

Hello James! Well, I know Liberty Cable has no-contract plans and they recently bought Choice Cable which is the Cable company for Lajas. So maybe they now offer no-contract plans. Check with Choice because they are now a “Liberty” Company so maybe they adopted that part of Liberty.

Hi .. Im going to be in porto rico for 3months and was browsing through this site. I have a question about claro internet..om this site you said they pride themselves in having unlimited data downloads however on their site the most they had was 30g. Need some help please

Hello Jay, I live here in the states, but may be moving there for a while to help out my folks who live in Vega Baja. I am a nurse and was told that things there concerning finding work for USA nurses is not like here. I may have to be there a year to help my folks. My Spanish is pretty good, but I am thinking, if I cannot work in medical there, can it be easy to find other work just so I can have some income coming in?
I been reading all the posts here about the Internet Service Providers and will need service because I plan to continue my RN nursing online courses while I am there for a while.

I think there are some differences here regarding the nurses but I honestly do not know how is it different. In nearby Manatí there are several medical facilities which may be a place to start looking. If you don’t want to be in the medical field here, you can work in something else but it really depends on what you are looking for. One thing is for sure, don’t expect as good of a salary, people here generally do not make as much money as in the US for the same work.

Hello and thank you Jay for the reply. As far as working there I can work anywhere: fast food, stores, does not matter, as long as I earn some money so I can save it before I return to the states. I figured that salaries there are not same as here. I understand about the nursing as well.

Hello Oscar, hope you found a job. I am also a nurse who moved from the States. Had a hell of a time getting licensed here in Puerto Rico. Most jobs require that you are a member of the “Colegio de Enfermeras”. No entity has worse customer service than them. Sorry about the ranting…Pay for nurses is so close to minimum wage, its not worth working as a nurse in PR. I make more money on my sewing hobby. Anyway, I have Claro and other than having to wait for the calls to go through, haven’t really had any problems. I only have about 3 Megs of speed, but works consistent and I’m able to stream videos well, while using the internet for other things.

I have internet service with libertyPR and i dont have any problem, I was some time ago a ClaroPR customer but the internet speeds in my area are horrible ( 1 – 3.5 mbs) with liberty i have 10 mbs and planning to upgrade to 40mbs.

Tops speeds from major IPS in PR (home service):

LiberyPR: 200mbs donwload /20mbs upload

ClaroPR: 150Mbs / 20Mbs (1Gb in some areas), its depends in your location.

I’m leaving claro after 15 years due to worsening speeds and frequent outages…I looked into boom net puerto rico and found no customer reviews, but I think I’ll try it out.
2 year contract, 50 activation/installation fee, I think its owned by the dish puerto rico people.
I’ll let you know how that works out….

Unfortunately I have never been a customer of BoomNet, nor do I know anyone who has. In my opinion they are rather pricey for what they offer. It may be worth it if the customer service is good, but I don’t know if it is.

i used dsl but the land lines here were old never really got the dl speed i paid for on top of that every time it rain lines would get noise and the connection if the modem was able to connect it was inconsistent and extremely poor, with incredible low speed

changed to cable and its been a lot better

problem in PR is that we pay too much for too little to whatever isp we use since theres barely if any competition between most of the time, only 2 providers be that cable or dsl (for gaming anything other than those 2 is worthless as those have the lowest pings)
(latency is what kills enjoyable online gaming sessions not speed)

I have had Liberty for both internet and television for over 2 years now – but not anymore. They are by far the worst service provider ever. The speed they advertise is never provided (go online and test it whenever you want, it may be 1/2 of what you are paying for.) If you have a problem don’t expect them to be timely. Two to three weeks to wait for a repair is not unusual (I have a facebook list of comments from friends that show this is not just me). And the service is very glitchy. I have never, ever had to deal with such a frustrating company in my life. We now have DirecTV for cable and are having either AeroNet or Icomm put in this week.

I am very glad to see that you are still answering questions, this being a bit of an old post by now… But I would like to know, Are there any providers that offer a decent upload speed for the northwestern area? I currently have Choice, but my upload speed is 1mbps, and I was not at peak usage time when I tested this…

Have you tired Claro? Unfortunately the upload speeds are never awesome and I rarely see them advertised. Maybe Claro has faster speeds but I searched on their website and I couldn’t find anything regarding the upload speeds. I doubt Claro would be much faster though.

But Claro would be my next option, any other company would be a smaller company which I honestly wouldn’t know too much about and as much as I like to support smaller companies, my experiences with smaller internet companies have not been stellar.

i have claro… since PRTC…. now with claro i always have problems with the phone line… a lot of noice. when the come by, always said no ploblems with it. pssss…. im tired …. i dont want phone service any more. i need a double pack, internet and cable tv. no phone. i cant find a good one. and dish ufff they can make changes on your plan at any time. my mom start paying $23.00 and now they charge her almost $ 40 something…. thats the problem with them.

We will be renting a condo in Luquillo for 1 1/2 months this winter. The condo we’ll be renting doesn’t have internet. What would be the cheapest way of having internet for this short period? In the past the condos we’ve rented had Liberty internet already set up but this condo doesn’t have anything set up. Thanks for your help.

Are you able to use your phone as a mobile hotspot? Honestly if I were you that’s what I would do. Back several months ago, Liberty had a no-contract service option, which meant that you could cancel anytime, if they do, you may want to contact them and the condo owner and see if that’s an option, you’ll just cancel right before you’re supposed to leave. It would be a hassle though.

But, if you can tether your phone, maybe that’s the best way to do things for that short period of time. I suppose you shouldn’t go crazy on the usage. Will you be going out to places? Nowadays there are a lot of hotspots around such as at coffee shops, fast-food restaurants, malls, etc. I would try to take advantage of that too.

DM wireless is a rather small company. It is like it says, wireless. I personally do not know anyone that has it so I haven’t heard whether is good or bad. I do know that other wireless internet services (similar to this DM wireless company) have had mixed reviews such as getting really slow speeds for no apparent reason. They have options with or without a contract so expect the advertised price to be the one with the contract or service agreement.

I’ve actually called them in the past to get more information because their website is very limited but after waiting on hold for about 15-20 mins they always ask me to give them my information and then they will call me back, otherwise they refuse to answer any of my questions. So, unfortunately I don’t know much about them and they are not helping me help them by giving me information to share.

They have prices that are similar to the other companies but I don’t know if they have a setup fee or anything, they probably do though otherwise they would advertise the “no set-up fee”.

Well, it really depends on what you want. If I remember correctly, Morovis has Claro (DSL), Liberty (Cable), HughesNet (Satellite), even a small company called CoquiTel.

Do you prefer fast speed over constant speed? Will you be using the internet during peak times (evenings)? Liberty will be quicker to set up, will give you faster speeds for the money, but it is suceptible to speed fluctuations and lower speeds during peak usage time. Claro will be more expensive per the speed, setup would be a hassle and customer service is abysmal at best, BUT the internet is quite reliable and the speed is fairly consistent regardless of time of day.

If I were you I’d try Liberty first and check for offers without a year contract, if you like them then good, otherwise switch to Claro or some of the others. I personally have never dealt with Hughes or CoquiTel so I can’t say much about their service.

Honestly I do not know anyone with PR WiFi. I did look through the terms and the prices once and I found them to be rather expensive for what they offer. Even more expensive than Claro. Granted, their customer service may be much better, but they seem to have an awful lot of fine print. The prices also don’t include installation, at least it doesn’t say it includes it, which normally means it doesn’t include it. The contract is for one year.

This may be a problem where you live, I personally have had very little problem with them. Even with Liberty cable having better rates and faster speeds I am hesitant to jump over to cable internet because I have had many problems with them in the past. So I guess people should try one or the other, they both seem to have their pros and cons.

THAT IS TRUE. THE SERVICE IS REALLY BAD AND WHEN YOU CALL TO RECEIVE COMPENSATION FOR THE TIME YOU WERE WITHOUT INTERNET THEY DON’T WANT TO GIVE THE COMPENSATIONS UNTIL YOU FIND TWO PERSON IN YOUR AREA WITHOUT INTERNET AT THE SAME TIME YOU WERE WITHOUT INTERNET. ONCE I WAS ASKING AROUND THE URBANIZATION ASKING AND THE ONLY PERSON WITH CLARO WAS ME. I FINISHED WITH THEM MORE THAN SEVEN YEARS AND THEY WANTED TO ME TO PAY THEM $0.58. I COULDN’T BELIEVE BECAUSE I PAID EVERY INVOICE I RECEIVED FROM THEM. I HAVE A SLOGAN FOR THAT COMPANY; BUT IN SPANISH: ” CLARO, CLARO QUE ES UNA PORQUERÍA”.

Aeronet is making its way to the residential market, but mostly it is still for businesses. I do know 2 people who use Aeronet and they are not very happy with them. I’m glad there are some out there who are happy with the service! One thing my friends had to do was to sign a 3-year contract at a fixed rate, which I think it’s pretty long, both in the fact that a 3-year contract is just too long and also that prices and/or internet speeds tend to improve over time. That may not be the case anymore but that was the case then.

I honestly do not know if any of these companies are locally owned. I honestly don’t think so. I believe Liberty Cable is part of Liberty Global which is headquartered in the U.K. Then Claro is a subsidiary of Claro Américas which is then a part of América Móvil which is a Mexican Company.

Choice cable maybe may have been owned locally, I don’t know much about Choice, however last December they got bought out by Liberty so that should be a *NO* on that too. Maybe the only company that is locally owned may be Optico-Fiber/Critical Hub Networks which once was known as Caribe Net. I’m not sure on that either but I think they may be the closest we have to locally owned. Optico-Fiber is the only company here that is slowly expanding and offering Gigabit Internet in Puerto Rico.

I am debating moving to PR for 6 months to test out actively trading stocks. I know that there has recently been some tax incentives for hedge funds to set up offices in San Juan. I am curious what internet they will be using, since I am sure it is going to be the best available. My search for housing will depend on the most reliable internet available. Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Well. It depends what you need. Do you need reliability or speed or cost effective?

There are high hopes for the gigabit internet that is slowly creeping in, check out my page on Gigabit Internet in Puerto Rico. I honestly do not know anyone that has it, so I don’t know how reliable it is. But is it definitely fast, main problem being it is limited to very few areas.

Cable internet with Liberty Cable (Assuming you’re thinking San Juan metro and surrounding areas) can be fast, but being cable internet, the speeds fluctuate widely, slowing down significantly during peak usage times. However, they have plans up to 120 Mbps. Check their plans here.

Claro is through DSL. Probably not the best “bang for the buck” in terms of speed, but I’ve found them to be more consistent with the speed, meaning very little to no speed changes throughout the day (unlike cable). The initial setup sucks, they are terrible and their customer service is abysmal at best, but I rarely have to deal with them. I posted a link for their plans in your previous comment.

My family and I are planning on living winter months in PR but Internet so incredibly crucial to my business. I need Fios type speeds and can’t have much down time. What areas of PR offer the fastest and most reliable internet? Not really interested in living in San Juan, looking for more of a vacation vibe when I’m there. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks 🙂

Well unfortunately there is nothing quite like Fios but the internet speeds are not that bad here; we have Gigabit internet in Puerto Rico starting to expand but right now it is limited to the San Juan area, and honestly I don’t know anyone that has it so I can’t say with any degree of confidence whether the service is good or bad 🙁 The internet service company may depend on where you live, particularly if you are looking at cable internet.

The problem with cable internet, (even though there are plans that have really fast speeds) is that the speed can go down significantly during peak times.

So, if you want to move to the west or south you have to look at Choice cable, otherwise the other company is Liberty cable which services the east, north, and the San Juan Metro.

Of course there’s Claro, which offers DSL, not the cheapest nor the fastest, and it does have the worst customer service, but in my experience, it has the most reliable and consistent service.

One company that is making noise for businesses is Aeronet. I do know one person that is a client of theirs and he seems less than impressed. Really nothing special there he says, plus they made him sign a 3-year contract! But, you take a look at their plans and make that decision. You can check them out at aeronetpr.com

If I were you, I’d go with Cable, especially if you will only be here during the winter. Normally the cable companies have English-speaking customer service, they are easier to be set up with, and they have decent internet speeds for a decent price. However, speed does fluctuate depending on how far down the cable line you are.

HOWEVER, if you will be here through the hurricane season, I suggest you go with Claro. Why? Because you will lose the internet service for at least a week every time we have a tropical storm or hurricane if you go with cable. However if you have Claro, as long as you have a power generator, you are MUCH more likely to continue to have internet service through the phone line (DSL) compared to cable.

Having said that, if we get a category 4 or 5 hurricane then you can forget all I just said because just about everything will be destroyed and it won’t matter what service you have because you will lose it regardless.

I now live in Old San Juan and thought it would be great to get DirectTV since that’s what I had in the states and since they also offered internet service, felt it would be great to have one bill. Well, that is not the case. The cable is fine, but their internet is a one computer use USB which is fine, but I was told I could get a router to make it accessible by others. Not the case. The only router that will work can only be purchased through Amazon and the maker of the router doesn’t even sell it anymore.

Oh wow! So sorry to hear! Since you are in Old San Juan, have you looked to see if you are in the area that has gigabit coverage?

Read my post on Gigabit Internet in Puerto Rico. I have a link there to the coverage area and also that same page has the contact info and the prices. If not, there’s always cable internet and DSL. :-/

Well, I don’t work for Claro, and their customer service is abysmal (and that’s a compliment). But I’ve kept my internet through them because it has been the most reliable and consistent internet service. Cable internet kept dropping off and I had a technician at my house every week or so. My DSL service with Claro has dropped only once in 5 years. But it did take a few days to get it fixed, so it sucked while it was out, but it has not been interrupted any other time in all those years.

Set up with them is terrible and it takes about 2 weeks after you sign up with them, but after that, the actual internet service has actually been pretty decent.

Claro is DSL and they only offer internet when combined with a phone service. Click here to see their plans, their internet speeds get up to 50 Mbps at the moment but it is not available in all areas.

I also would like to invite you to our new forum. I’m trying to build a community so everyone helps each other and get different perspectives. It’s starting now so it’s not much at the moment but hopefully it will grow gradually.

What ever you do, do not get libertypr service in Puerto Rico. Their service is horrible to a point that customer are posting their issue on facebook and other social medias. Once you sign up with them, you are automatically bound to their $200 termination fee whether or not you get service. There were also complaint from customers who were down for a bill cycle, and were sent to collection on service they did not have. They have an F rating in http://www.bbb.org/south-east-florida site with all the complaints they have.

As a current Liberty customer I have to say I do not recommend Liberty as an internet provider. Customer service is absolutely horrible. For the second time (since October) I have requested assistance with the service because it is intermittent, the last two weeks, nothing, and they need to send someone to fix it and the appointment is in 3 weeks!!! As a person who uses internet constantly in the household this is unacceptable. On top of this, I tried to put my account on hold (because they keep charging the service), but they told me I had to go personally to the office to do this. I will go to the office, but to cancel the service.

I subscribed to liberty a month ago. Today I have had the first serious downtime of 2 hours so far. I work from home and I am using my phone interenet as a backup. I called them for support. After 2 minutes just asking me to restart the modem, the terrible rep told me I needed a technical visit because there was no issues in my area (condado). ” Ok..” , I tell him, ” can we do it as soon as possible?” . He goes and tell me that the next available slot of time is 10 days from today. WTF???? For sure I am going to request it to be reimbursed but I was wondering if anyone in the list here who lives in condado has a better experience with other providers? I have the feeling that it is bad services all around.

I personally have not had Liberty. I did however had OneLink before it was bought out by Liberty. My experience with OneLink was the same as you are describing with Liberty. I did ask for reimbursements many times with OneLink for long service interruptions and they always refused, whether it was because of a Hurricane or because of their own fault, they never reimbursed me. Maybe it is different with Liberty. I changed to Claro, it’s slower than Liberty and the customer service is horrendous, but in my experience, service interruptions are very few and far between, usually resolved in a few hours or less, and the speed is always steady, which was not the case with cable.

A friend of mine is with Liberty and he had many problems with the router they gave him, eventually they ended up giving him a completely different one and the problem never came back. So maybe you can ask for another (different) router.

Great write up Jay. Would you happen to know what might be the best option for someone living in Coamo, PR? My in-laws retired to Coamo and their internet service with Claro has been absolutely horrible. I think they are paying aprox $40 for <1mbps. I wonder if their are any other options for them in the area. They really need reliable service internet service with all their kids in the states (facetime, wifi calling, etc). Thanks in advance for any advice!

Well first of all, I’m surprised they are paying so much for such a slow speed, they should get that checked, maybe check what other services they are paying for. I used to pay around $42 for 4Mbps and basic phone (no long distance). I believe those are still the prices for basic internet and phone so check if they are paying for other things they don’t need.

As far as another company, “Choice cable” may be the other choice (no pun intended). However if they live in a remote section of Coamo then there may not be cable service available. So check the details with Claro, if everything is correct and their plan is just that expensive because of location then check with Choice Cable.

Thanks for the great information on your blog. I’m hoping to move to Puerto Rico in the near future. I work from home as a sign language interpreter via video. I need dedicated speeds both download and upload. Consistency both ways is paramount. I’m wondering if you can ask friends and colleagues about business plans for internet. I’ve done some internet searches, but nothing seems promising. I can’t make the move if I can’t work there. Any suggestions at all would be appreciated. Again, thanks for the site. It’s been very helpful in many ways.

Well, the truth is that there are no 100% internet companies here. But as far as consistency goes, I’ve has my best luck with Claro. Their customer service is worse than ABYSMAL! I mean they are a huge pain to set up with, however after setup in all honesty it has been a breeze. I invite you to read my review on Why I Renewed with Claro Internet.

I know Claro has business plans (planes para Empresas), they are not cheap, but honestly they have been (at least to me) the most consistent ones. Take a look at their site here (use Google Chrome to translate page).

There’s also Aeronet. I’ve heard they are “OK”, but I have too heard customer support complaints, and when there is something broken, they take forever to fix it. I have not personally worked with them but I know 2 people who use them and neither one of them is very satisfied.

Also, Have you seen my post on Gigabit Internet in Puerto Rico? They seem to be the next big thing here. It’s fairly new and the locations they serve are very few, but hey, maybe you move to one of those places. Take a look and contact them if you have questions. I don’t know anyone that uses their service so I don’t know just how good or bad they really are.

Also, recently Claro installed the fiber optic cables here. In fact I saw them putting the cables into a hole in the beach! I had no idea that there were some underground fiber optic cables in the depth of the oceans! I really thought that was a myth or something that people said, but it is actually true.

I just moved to old San Juan and learned that basically I had no other choice but to use Claro as my internet provider. I’m
Currently playing for 5mb (so depressing coming from the states) but what I’m actually getting is between 1-3mb. Randomly changes. Any advice? Is there something else out there?

I’m so sorry to hear that! =( Is there a particular reason why you can’t use Liberty? Have you tried them out? Is this for home or business?

I know it’s sad to go back down in speed so much I had the same issue when I moved here. However, I know Liberty has internet plans that go up to 60 Mbps, Claro I think has up to 50 Mbps but they recently installed a 100 Mbps line into San Juan, not sure if/when we’ll see velocity increases with that though.

I’m surprised that you see speed changes with Claro, the main reason why I’m paying more money for less speed with Claro is precisely because my speed does NOT fluctuate, unlike with Cable where my speed has gone from 12 Mbps to less than 1 Mbps!

What I would recommend? Well, give Liberty Cable a call and ask if you can use one of their plans, “Triple-Play” plans give you the best bang for the buck if you are interested in TV and Phone. If Liberty says no then give Claro a call and tell them that you are getting 1 Mbps and to please have someone go test it out. There are many reasons why the speed drops, such as the Concrete structure of buildings, distance from the router, actual wi-fi antenna of the computer or mobile device. The best way to test if you are getting the full speed is to use speedtest.net while you have your computer hooked up to the router using the Ethernet cable, not wi-fi.

I’f I’m paying for 5 Mbps, I would expect no less than 4.2 Mbps consistently, and definitely no fluctuations! Especially with Claro! So if it is fluctuating that bad even when you have it connected using the Ethernet cable, you must definitely give them a call because it shouldn’t be that way, not with Claro; if you do change to Liberty then you should actually expect a significant decrease in speed during peak usage hours, so I suggest getting no less than 20 Mbps if you can and do change to Liberty Cable.

Well I live here in Ponce, PR. For about 6 years now. My outlook on most of customer service here is that they’re all lazy and worthless to talk to. I’ve had such bad service here. ESPECIALLY the internet. Its as if these companies just want to suck my money out of me. The one internet provider that I’ve at least had DECENT is Choice. Even though they sometimes end up losing my internet due to a storm or bad weather its been better than other competitors out there.

Claro consisted no no no i had the 5mega at first it work graet but then it started to drop the i call gose up after the 5min from calling it gose down agin 1mega or less it keep happening over snd over claro sucks

This is actually old now the speeds are much more better one link offers up to 10mbps for the price they used to charge for 6mbps, dsl now have up to 50mbps expensive but for a decent price they offer 16mbps and there is one wireless company that it is amazingly good called aeronetpr.com expensive but reliable

Yes that is true, I will update as soon as I can. Even though there are faster speeds now, there are still significant decreases in speeds during peak times with Liberty. But it may still be fast for what you need it.

One Link PR just dropped TCM< Turner Classic Movies. Now One Link cable PR is a truly worthless company. Internet speed frequently drops to such a slow speed that watching video on youtube or hulu is usually impossible. Have never seen such a poorly run company. at least none that are still in business.

Well, I had many problems with OneLink, particularly the internet speed going as slow as 100Kbps in the evenings! It didn’t matter what I tried, they never did anything about it. But when you consider that their only competition is CLARO, you see how they are still in business. The only advantage Claro has over OneLink is that their internet speed is consistent, slow, but consistent. However, Claro’s customer service is abysmal. So it is truly a toss-up between 2 subpar companies, unless you want to pay more, and get Dish Network’s internet, which recently got introduced to the local market.